Dinh Van Sat, a patriarch of an ethnic minority village at Tra Tap Commune of Quang Nam Province, said death was considered final by Ca Doong and Xe Dang people.

Villagers from mountainous areas in Quang Nam Province look frightened when asked where their dead are buried.

The villagers, mostly of the Xe Dang and Ca Doong ethnic minorities, conduct funerary rites to separate two worlds – the living and the dead – to avoid being haunted by their dearly departed.

The cemeteries are called rung ma, which means “ghost forest” in Vietnamese.

“Each village has a burial place which is not so far away in the forest,” said Ho Van Nen, secretary of the Communist Party of Tra Tap Commune in Nam Tra My District.

“They also have a unique way of burying the dead.”

He said Ca Doong people often dig a hole about one meter deep and one meter in diameter and line it with pebbles.

The dead body is placed in the hole and covered with a layer of pebbles and soil.

For Xe Dang people, a similar method is used, although tree branches are used instead of pebbles, Nen said.

The burial grounds are hard to identify because the graves do not have tombstones or any above-ground markers, he said.

Nen also said sometimes wild animals dig up the corpses because the graves are so shallow.

At a cemetery of the Village No. 4 at Tra Tap Commune, passers-by can easily smell the dead from hundreds of meters away.

A villager said some areas in the forest had been used as cemeteries by villages that had since moved elsewhere.

Recently, a construction site near the Nam Tra My General Hospital found several human skeletons thought to belong to a forgotten cemetery of some long-departed village.

Unique rituals

Dinh Van Sat, a patriarch of an ethnic minority village at Tra Tap Commune, said death was considered final by Ca Doong and Xe Dang people.

The purpose of all funeral rituals is to completely cut all bonds between the dead and the living.

He said the first thing a family did when someone died was to divide their property amongst members of the household, with the deceased receiving an equal share.

Everything from rice and salt to bowls and pans and even gongs is distributed and the dead person’s share is buried with them, he said.

Sat said the deceased were buried the day they died, after being told by their family that they had received an equal share of their property so they shouldn’t come back and ask for more.

According to traditional rituals, women are not allowed to accompany the body to the burial ground.

After burying the dead, the men go to a nearby spring to bathe several times.

Some remain in the forest for days before returning to their village to avoid being followed by ghosts.

Meanwhile, other villagers join the deceased’s family for a joyful party, designed to show the dead person’s soul that it can leave without worrying about loved ones.

After all rites are conducted, the villagers never mention the deceased again, or visit their graves.

Reported by Dieu Hien